oa Unlocking the Potential of Single-atom Alloy Catalysts for Hydrogenation of CO2 to Methane and Methanol

Single-atom alloy (SAA) catalysts, with advantages of particular geometric and electronic structures, have great potential to improve catalyst performance and maximise atom efficiency for a range of industrially relevant reactions. The use of SAAs for CO2 hydrogenation is of particular interest, since captured CO2 can be converted into valuable chemicals and fuels, such as methane and methanol. This literature review focusses on the use of SAAs for CO2 hydrogenation to methane and methanol. It has been found that SAAs could provide an improved catalytic activity and/or selectivity over the respective monometallic catalysts for CO2 hydrogenation to methane and methanol. A variety of mechanisms have been proposed to explain the effect of the SAA structure on catalyst performance. Primarily, these proposals involve changes in energetics associated with alloy formation, such as changes in intermediate energies facilitating a faster reaction, or changes in adsorption energies leading to improved selectivity.